Field of the Invention
Embodiments relate to a method and an arrangement for automatic transmission of status information from at least one first communications terminal set up for speech communication, to at least one second communications terminal set up for text communication.
Background of the Related Art
There are a number of terminal sets that include at least one first communications terminal set up for speech communication and a second communications terminal set up for text communication. Examples of such communications terminals set up for speech communications are telephone terminals, commonly known as telephones, for example, fixed network telephones, mobile telephones or other communications terminals set up for speech communications. In addition to these communications terminals set up for speech communications, other communications terminals have long been known which are set up primarily or exclusively for text communications, such as for example, communications terminals for the reception and/or for sending of messages in text form, such as for example, e-mails, SMS, or other communications in text form.
Communications terminals of this kind are frequently connected by a communications infrastructure, which normally includes also a communications server which enables the transmittal or a transport of messages or other information between the terminals involved.
Communications terminals set up for speech communications are usually connected together by one or several speech communications servers whose technical design depends on the communications technology used. For example, telephone terminals in classical telephone networks are interconnected by means of call processing systems or even by a hierarchy of call processing systems, which can each comprise private and/or public call processing systems, depending on their complexity or coverage.
With the increasing expansion of data networks, such as the internet for example, which is being used increasingly for speech communications also, in addition to classical speech communications servers, i.e. conventional call processing systems, other types of speech communications servers are being used which transport or transmit speech messages in digitized format in a manner similar to other data appearing in data networks which are not generated by digitizing of speech messages. Examples of such speech communications servers are virtually all types of network elements commonly used in data networks for data transport, because it fundamentally makes no difference for the transmission of digital data whether or not these data have been created by digitizing of speech signals.
Due to the increasing standardization of communications networks associated with the integration of speech communications networks and text communications networks into general data communications networks, the distinction between speech communication, text communication and other forms of communication, such as picture or video data communication for example, is increasingly becoming less a question of hardware architecture and more a question of the software products being run on increasingly more standardized hardware architectures used for data communication for the communications protocols that are appropriate to the nature and origin of the particular data being transported and to requirements associated therewith. For example, in the transmission of speech data in data networks, a greater demand is placed on the transmission speed of the data than in text communications networks in which it is often less important whether an email or an SMS requires one-tenth or one-half second for its transmission.
The differentiation between communications terminals for speech communications and for text communications is thus increasingly becoming a question of the usage of certain services or protocols than a question of the equipment used and hardware architectures. For example, a personal computer, a device known as a Smart-Phone or a Notebook today can easily integrate the functions of a telephone terminal and an email client in one device. The network elements used to create network functions thus regularly and simultaneously perform the functions of speech communications servers and text communications servers, or even more generally of data communications servers, wherein the differences in the various type of communications are less a question of hardware and more a question of the communications protocols used.